A groundbreaking study of climate and environmental messaging in the UK has identified the most effective way of advocating policies and reduced consumption.
With Britain gradually cooling off after a record-breaking May heatwave, and signs of a ‘super El Niño’ set to hit in the next month — pushing global temperatures to extreme levels — we don’t need to look far for reasons to use resources more responsibly. But the need to consume less goes well beyond water alone.
Once an outsider concept, degrowth is fast gaining traction as a solution to stabilising the global economy and ecosystem. Rather that promoting greener consumer choices while essentially still advocating for people to continue buying and using as usual, the idea is that we should get through less of everything to maximise efficiency and begin curtailing the rapid rate at which we are running out of resources — and the capacity to nurture more.
Currently, water shortages are the most tangible example of how the UK needs to start thinking seriously about degrowth. Hosepipe bans have been an everyday factor in summertime life for decades, certainly back before the legendary 1976 heatwave. Getting people to make this behaviour change is essentially asking them to ‘degrow’ their consumption through a process of reducing use, rather than simply making sure nothing is wasted.
Now research published in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and London School of Economics and Political Science has revealed how authorities and organisations should communicate the need for degrowth. The study looked specifically at millennials in the UK, testing different forms of marketing messaging.
In the first instance, two types of messaging were used for a sustainable bath soap brand: green growth (the idea that sustainability and sustained economic expansion are compatible) and degrowth (use less, live better). Stage two then involved a non-commercial organisation presenting environment policies and values relating to economic growth, within the framework of citizenship, again promoting green growth and then degrowth.
When it came to the commercial setting, the logic of buying, even when the message was to consume less, was pervasive. In comparison, the non-commercial instance showed that degrowth messaging did shift world views enough for people to begin questioning economic growth as a societal ‘aim’. Meanwhile, green growth messaging promoted more interest in environmental policies.
The researchers have concluded that degrowth could be an essential messaging type to begin reshaping perspectives towards more environmentally responsible behaviour, but short-term policy support can be won by emphasising green growth. More so, non-commercial organisations cannot rely on established marketing tropes and logic, and should instead focus on connecting with deeper values and visions of social change.
Image: Tânia Mousinho / Unsplash
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